Today we walked all the way to the old Siena. It was about a 20 minute walk and, contrarily to walking from the train station to the hotel, it's an easy walk...
One of the hotel's garden leading to the entrance gate (for pedestrians, there's a normal car entrance too)
Gate to old Siena
Once inside we slowly made our way towards the main piazza:Piazza del Campo. On the way, we bought some food and I bought myself an Opinel knife so we could piknik and chill on the piazza like many other Italians and visitors. We really took our time to relax and take in the hot sun before buying ourselves once again some gelato. They even had gluten-free cones for Nath and Lianne. The book Nathalie bought, "Gluten-free guide to Italy", is pretty useful :)
View near the entrance of the city
Piazza Tolomei - Chiesa di San Cristoforo
Lunching on Piazza del Campo
Palazzo Pubblico
Nath and Lianne friendly gelato
Now that we were full of energy, we went to Palazzo Comunale with it's Torre del Mangia (tower of food ?), which overlooks the piazza, and bought tickets to climb to the top. It's around 400 steps, I had Lianne on my back, and the view from the top is amazing (some pictures below). I was very scared but I think that I'm getting better since I keep forcing myself to go up these towers (last one was The Monument in London).
On the way up, Piazza del Campo
Staircase of the tower
View from the top
Torre del Mangia from seen from the ground
When we came back down, we visited the museum and then went to the Duomo which is really special with it's striped architecture. We decided not to pay to go inside and left to go to Pinacoteca Nazionale.
Duomo di Siena
Chilling in front of the Duomo
Seen on a door while heading to the museum
Nathalie and Lianne waited outside while I visited. This was a suggestion from my friend Jeffrey and, like he says, "the paintings are very special, some of the best Gothic art in the world". Things that particularly hit me: Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus, Baby Jesus holding a bird in his hand, a painting with scenes of torture and a painting with an elephant that made me think that for some people back then, seeing an elephant in a painting must have been as realistic as seeing a dragon. Maybe dragons really DID exist but we've never found anything to prove it. Existent until proven fantasy ?
When I came out, Nath said the guide REALLy suggested to go inside the Duomo so we bought some tickets and went inside. I'm glad we did. I expected the striped stones to be just outside but it's also inside. There's also many other art pieces on the walls and floors. The weirdest part is a series of heads looking down at you. I had seen the same thing on a building in one of the main streets of the city.
Inside Duomo di Siena
More heads :S
Duomo in different lighting
We finally ate supper at a different restaurant than the one from yesterday. It was as good. I had some pasta with Truffels and Nath wild board with chocolate, pine nuts and almonds. Among other things.
Old church with moss on the way to the restaurant
We took a cab back to the hotel. Once there I had to throw away my blue pair of jean :( I had bought it just 3 months ago. They were super confortable but very thin and I had a hole showing a bit too much of my underwear :S
Tomorrow, Firenze !
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